“We have by no means reached our ideal.”

We don’t have many of the earliest issues of The Western Home Monthly, but what we do have paints a picture of a magazine eager to expand and improve rapidly, in terms of subscribers and print production. In May 1901 the editors beseech readers to send letters and to share the magazine with friends, in the process explaining in helpful terms exactly how this newfangled magazine technology works:

That unprecedented offer on page nine, by the way, is an advertisement for a novel extolling the virtues of farm life over the city, offered as part of a clubbing deal along with an annual subscription for The Western Home Monthly and The Union Gospel News (a weekly paper out of Oregon), plus a copy of The Farmer’s Business Guide, all for the low low price of $1.50. They just don’t make deals like that anymore.